You’re the One Rhiannon Giddens right now

This article today is prompted by reading the “Folk Like Us” profile by John Jeremiah Sullivan in the May 20, 2019, issue of New Yorker Magazine. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to this American treasure trove, at least an online subscription. Yours truly has benefited from this weekly periodical since the age of 16. You may have heard this mention in the past. Elucidating does not go far enough to describe the influence and edification. So much new from Rhiannon Giddens since the original publication of this article, including the vocal forward track, You’re the One, and the Pulitzer Rhiannon won for a new opera that tells the true story of an enslaved man taken from his home in what is now Senegal and trafficked to South Carolina. The opera premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA, less than a mile down the road from where the man was sold. After that, he spent five decades on plantations, including the one where he wrote his autobiography — the only known surviving slave narrative written in Arabic.

 

I highly recommend a read or listening to the Audm recording for the rich American Southern story of Rhiannon Gidden’s primary influence, Wilmington musician Frank Johnson. So much of Rhiannon Gidden’s personal history and the story of Mr. Johnson’s legacy touch the Piedmont, NC region, including Greensboro, Mebane, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. US History has all but glossed over the early port city Wilmington story, which includes an 1898 racial massacre and the subsequent exodus of its black citizens, not only knocked loosed the foundations of a rising African American middle class but also came close to obliterating the deep cultural memory of what had been among the most important black towns in the country for more than a century. The people who might have remembered Frank Johnson best, not just as a musician but as a man, were themselves violently unremembered.

Tomorrow is My Turn (available below Apple Music)

 

Rhiannon Giddens performed at the Coen brothers’ promotional concert for Inside Llewyn Davis, and she so impressed T Bone Burnett with her talent that he offered to produce her on the spot. He helped choose the classic American songs, working as an old-school A& R man (i.e., Artist and Repertoire). Patsy Cline’s urban country “She’s Got You” and Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s gospel blues “Up Above My Head” are perfect for Giddens’ flexible, nuanced vocals. With a backup band similarly top-notch—including legendary Funk Brothers percussionist Jack Ashford and veteran Nashville session bassist Dennis Crouch—Giddens is surrounded by star power. Yet Giddens shines brightest.